


Meet the In-Laws

by gardnerhill



Series: The Vermilion Problem [4]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Community: watsons_woes, Other, Vampire Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 09:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11643594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: Stranger than living with a vampire is finding out that Sherlock Holmes has a brother.





	Meet the In-Laws

**Author's Note:**

> For the JWP 2017 Prompt #28, **Incorporate the supernatural.** This is a story in my Vampire!Holmes series [The Vermilion Problem](https://archiveofourown.org/series/283167), and takes place not long after the events in the story [L’arbore di Diana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389162).

In those first years of association with my friend and colleague Sherlock Holmes, I had learned much about his fearsome, accursed kind but nothing about his direct family or its analogy among the night-fiends that counted him a member. This changed one day approximately twenty months into our association.

It was after tea on a summer evening the year following a momentous October night that permanently altered our relationship from friends to something more. I lay in my bed together with Holmes – and we might as well have been lovers, for we had just shared a fluid far more precious than seed. It was at such times that Holmes was at his most human; he was warm against me with my own blood reviving him and colouring his cheeks, his body was relaxed and peaceful in my arms (my wrist neatly bandaged once my friend was done feeding), and his eyes, which glittered like icy stars when he was famished, were a warm and human grey once more. After centuries of sating himself to the death of his prey, he lay nearly in a trance in the lassitude that followed a willingly-offered vein and a repast taken in love and not fear.

For several days beforehand I had noticed a change in my friend; he had been withdrawn, distant more than his usual coolness, and I thought I saw fear once or twice when he looked directly at me. I knew he would tell me what troubled him when he thought I would need to know; and so it was.

We often spoke in the aftermath of his feeding from me. Much of the conversation was the same desultory topics we would discuss to while away the hours near the fire in the parlour; we talked of patients I’d tended, something funny Lestrade had said, the myths that had sprung up concerning his kind (“Crosses have no effect on me, Watson, but I will not willingly enter a church unless it is to solve a murder there”), and the obliquity of the elliptic. But this time Sherlock Holmes spoke first, and it was clearly what had been troubling him.

“I have received a written communication, Watson,” he said, “from my brother Mycroft.”

To say I was stunned to learn that my singular friend had a sibling would be putting the matter lightly. In the months we had been together, Holmes had said not a word regarding any type of kith nor kin. Needless to say I pressed him on the matter, wanting more information if he was willing to divulge such voluntarily. This missive from a brother seemed to have opened the topic for discussion, for Holmes obliged.

“Oh, our family goes back before the Conqueror, earls on a forested estate,” said he. “Mycroft and I had gotten separated from our hunting party one winter night in the woods, and there we were both beset and mauled by what we thought was a wolf. Our party found us and brought us back to the hall to tend to our wounds and my severe blood-loss. We seemed to recover, though we both loathed the full sunlight from our recuperation – but two weeks after the attack, the full hunger of our new kinship fell upon us both. Mycroft devoured father and I drained our mother to death, and we divided up the servants in like manner. Some managed to flee. Of course we did as well, and watched our hall burn as the terrified thralls put it to the torch, thinking they’d destroyed us. We discovered others of our kind, and terrorized the countryside till we drifted to London seeking more prey and anonymity. We have been here ever since.”

I shuddered at the recitation. But Holmes had warned me of his fiendish past. “Is Mycroft your junior?”

“A mere seven years my senior – a large divide for mortal siblings, but negligible in those who count their age in centuries. As he is the elder, this may explain why he is the more powerful of us despite us being turned by the same beast. And his powers of observation and deduction eclipse my own, as does his intelligence.”

Wonders piled on wonders. “Why is it that I am only now hearing of your brother?” was the first thing I could think to ask.

“Because of a disturbance you made at the entrance of his club last September,” was his reply. “The Diogenes Club in Pall Mall, of which he is the founding member.”

“The Diogenes –”

And then I remembered the note from that selfsame club months ago, that had sent us to the opera and had led to Holmes’ disappearance in the clutches of the monster-hunter and chanteuse Irene Adler. During my frantic search for my friend I had called upon a Pall Mall establishment featuring a marble statue of the lantern-bearing Greek philosopher outside; the portly doorman had sent me away. So that hadn’t been the Philosophers Club after all.

“So the person from that club, who asked for your aid just before your disappearance, was in fact your own brother? But if he is more intelligent than you, why–“

“Does he not do his own detection work?” Holmes completed my query, and smiled like a shark. “He does not care for my profession. I turned consulting detective because it not only dovetailed nicely with my forays into certain alleys for nourishment but because it piqued my curiosity and stimulated my brain. Mycroft prefers to be left alone, to contemplate his next meal among his fellow night-terrors.” He paused for a moment, long fingers stroking thoughtfully at the crook of my elbow, and the apprehensive look I had seen on his face for several days was back. “He has, however, expressed a curiosity about you – he is my intellectual superior, and possesses a greater power of observation and deduction than I, so it was no use keeping any kind of secret about your presence from him. That missive was a request that I drop by his club and present you to him, today after six. It is six now. If you care for a stroll I shall introduce you to curiosities beyond your ken.”

The last sentence was recited in a careless rush, but I could see that this “request” was not a frivolous invitation from his elder – any more than a general’s “I would like to see you later in my office, Corporal,” is a casual offer of tea.  
  
Holmes’ inhuman abilities permit him to hear the pounding of a terrified heart from across the room. Nevertheless I replied as airily as possible, “I should like nothing better than to meet your brother, Holmes,” because to do otherwise was cowardly, and because that small act of courage put a small but genuine smile on my friend’s face. And, to be frank, my curiosity about meeting this mysterious sibling was piqued.

Forty minutes later we were washed, dressed, and approaching an elegant portal in the Pall Mall district. The marble image of Diogenes was familiar to me from my hunt last year.

When we stood before the door, Holmes opened and closed his mouth as if to bite or yawn, but no sound came out. He turned to me, and his grey eyes were grave. “Watson. You must stay very silent until I speak again,” he said. “And…be yourself. That is the only advice I can give. Be yourself.”

Sherlock Holmes was _frightened_.

Before I could react to that the door opened to reveal what seemed to be a deserted foyer, with the usual paintings and marble busts that one would expect in any club.

As we walked in – our feet making no sound on the thick luxuriant carpet – a portly man approached us, the same doorman I’d seen in September. He put his finger to his lips; I nodded. Holmes nodded at me with the same finger to his lips, and at his indication I followed the portly man, following me behind in Indian-style.

We walked down the hall and through a doorway. I almost cried out in surprise at seeing other men there. The room was furnished as a parlour, comfortable and elegant, with large fireplaces and impressive bookcases. Many men sat or lay in that room, as well-clad as my friend or the doorman. And every last one of them was asleep, or sat with his eyes closed in a chair or divan. Not a sound arose from them – not a snore nor a drawn breath – and were it not for their presence in the flesh I would swear that I walked through the silence of a cemetery. I breathed through an open mouth, trying to calm my pounding heart, and set my feet lightly on that carpet; I understood here, as I had not at my friend’s words, that the slightest sound would be dangerous if not deadly. And even here, the thrill of this peril raced through me as it had in combat.

When we reached the end of the room and entered another room, this one lacking anyone save us three, the doorman closed the door behind us. The massive oak door shut as soundlessly as everything else here.

“You may speak in here, Watson,” Holmes said, and I jumped with a small cry at the sound. “This is the Stranger’s Room, the only room in this club where speech is permitted before sundown. Now one last moment of silence.” He gave a small smile to me, fear shining in his eyes, and turned. To my growing fear, Sherlock Holmes opened the great soundless oak door and re-entered the parlour of silent men. Again the door closed, leaving me with our guide.

The portly doorman looked me up and down. His own voice was a basso rumble. “So this is the mortal man who has turned my brother into a hero.” He did not say the word in a complimentary fashion.

Not a doorman after all.

I looked directly into the grey eyes of the large man who stood before me, and now I saw how his features were much the same as Sherlock Holmes’, though plumper and fleshier as was his entire being. I recalled Holmes’ story of their patricide; while Holmes had become a gaunt devourer of blood his brother seemed to have chosen flesh as his portion, like some Biblical tale of dividing spoils. “Mr. Mycroft Holmes.” I think my voice was reasonably steady. “I have the honour of calling your brother Mr. Sherlock Holmes my friend.” I spoke as coolly and stiffly as possible, and kept myself at parade attention lest I waver.

"It is more than friendship that you share.” His voice had dropped and sounded like ice-floes scraping against each other, sending a chill up my spine. “He smells of living blood, not the lifeblood of dead men. He emits a pulse of energy that matches your heartbeat exactly. You are his.”

Irene Adler had accused me of being a brainless thrall to a monster who considered me a pet; she changed her mind when she saw us together, and left us to tend to each other. This sibling of Holmes’ also saw the connection between us. And he hated it.

“Worse,” hissed out of this mountainous man, so physically close to me I would have felt his breath on my face if he had been truly alive. “He is _yours_.”

And I stared into the true face of Mycroft Holmes.

In later years I often received compliments from readers on my picturesque description of the demonic Hound of the Baskervilles. I took no credit for a colourful imagination in that case, for it had merely been a pale shadow of the face – wolf and human and hellspawn all at once, with black-oil eyes and finger-long teeth. It was a werewolf from a dozen nightmares, a horror that Poe could not encompass. I understood in this moment that he could rend me limb from limb and suffer no consequences.

I stood my ground, even as my knees knocked. For I was not unarmed, even here. My Army revolver might be locked in my bedroom at Baker Street, but I’d been told too many stories by my gran about such as these – and similar stories by Holmes of his own kind. I would not turn my back on him, would not drop my gaze. These monsters hated cowards almost as much as I did.

“You are afraid,” a voice like an arctic breeze rumbled out.

When you’re pinned down by enemy fire and terrified for your life, roar with rage. “Of course I’m afraid, you ass!” I snapped into that ice-gale.

And those pitiless black-oil eyes – blinked.

And I faced a stouter, older version of Sherlock Holmes once again, grey-eyed and flat-mouthed.

"It is selfish of you not to share your bounty with Sherlock’s kin,” Mycroft said. This time when he grinned, the only two teeth that were elongated were the upper incisors, like those of a vampire bat’s. “You are a little weak from losing blood earlier, but that will make this second course all the sweeter. My younger brother understands that he was to present tribute to his elder.” He came close once again, fangs aiming for my jugular.

I smiled as viciously as I could, hoping for his own icy grimace. “This blood is for Sherlock Holmes, and no one else of that surname. And it is given freely, with love. It would poison you to touch it, wouldn’t it?”

The mouth closed. Those grey eyes grew even colder. “The sun will set soon. When it does, our club members will awake, and they will be hungry. You will not be able to step out of that door without being devoured. You have till sunrise to remain here without going mad.” Mycroft Holmes stepped back, opened the soundless door, and closed it again.

Just as I reached for the door – it was not yet quite sunset – someone on the other side knocked hard on the door, three times. A loud clatter that would have filled that grave-silent parlour full of silent men.

The shrieks and howls on the other side were blood-chilling. But then the door thumped hard, as if some heavy creature threw its entire weight against the door. Another thing scratched at the door like a dog pawing for the doorknob. A hard heavy panting came from others. It was as if I’d been locked in the zoo, and all the cages opened at once.

I turned around. The room was furnished much the same as in the adjoining room. Shrieking and gibbering sounded on the other side of the door. The door creaked hard as if being wrenched on its hinges.

_Thank you, Gran._

I crouched before the fireplace and blew up a blaze. I searched the books. As I suspected there was not a single copy of the Bible on those shelves, but I found a volume of Galen in Latin. I pulled it out and settled down for the doubly difficult work of reading a medical treatise in a foreign language, which served as well a distraction as chanting Psalms would have done.

I have spent long nights in terrible pursuits – silent in a room with a poisonous snake, hunkered down on the other side of a redoubt while the enemy shouted and charged – but reading Latin through a cacophony of monstrous screams through every hour of the night was very nearly the worst.

The look of disbelief on Mycroft’s face, the next morning when he opened the door and found me only yawning now that the terrible shrieks were silenced in fiendish day-sleep, gave me a deep pleasure rivaled only by the look of joy on Sherlock Holmes’ face, walking into the room one step behind his brother. I knew, because I love stories, that I had just survived an ordeal in three stages and passed with flying colours. I had no doubt that a single moment of panic, cowardice or other unworthiness would have caused my death.

The door closed. “Done,” Mycroft Holmes said, and the cold rage in his eyes did not abate. “You will be safe in this club from now on, Doctor, day or night, from all members, provided you abide by the club rules.”

I met those eyes with my own cool confidence. Mycroft would hate me forever for what I’d done to his younger brother, but he respected that I was strong enough, brave enough and loyal enough to be a worthwhile companion for Sherlock Holmes.

The terrifying wolf-demon-man gave a very human sigh of exasperation and turned his attention to my Holmes. “Perhaps you are right that this taint provides strength, Sherlock.”

“I have been repeatedly surprised by such, for months now,” Sherlock Holmes replied. His voice was as level and cool as Mycroft’s, but his eyes were not icy when they regarded me.

“Are we quite done here?” I snapped, still looking Mycroft in those grey eyes so much colder than his brother’s. “I’d like very much to sleep as I was unable to do so last night. And I would rather not trust this club’s cook to provide a breakfast for a mortal man to enjoy.”

One heavy wolf-grey eyebrow arched. “A moment, if you would, Sherlock. Doctor,” said Mycroft Holmes, turning to face both of us as if he had simply called us in for a case and not an ordeal for my life, “I would like to ask your assistance in tracking down a missing club member, a _vrykólakas_ who is visiting from Greece.”


End file.
